Hero Electric has posted zero dispatches in April 2022. This has increased the waiting list for its buyers to 60 plus days and some of the dealerships have no stock to display.

Maruti Suzuki India Limited also had a production loss of 270,000 cars owing to chip shortage last year and there is a wait list of 268,000 customers. This will go up by 3 lakhs and the waitlist will not be liquidated by the end of the year, said company chairperson RC Bhargava.

Speaking on being unable to meet the market demand, Sohinder Gill, CEO, Hero Electric, said, “It’s like putting an emergency brake on a fast moving train. Our sales were almost doubling month on month and we somehow managed with sourcing from different geographies but the war collapsed a major supply chain resulting in this disruption.”

Gill said the company has geared up alternate sources and would soon resume production.

“Meanwhile we are using this time to enhance our plant capacity to increase our production volumes as well as revisit our systems and processes related to batteries to further reinforce the quality assurance of our bikes.”

“The recent happenings of fire incidents are an awakening call for the industry and we believe that even the best of the companies should introspect and constantly improve their designs and quality to repose confidence in the electric mobility that is going through such a robust growth path.”

Talking about Evs, Maruti chairman R.C. Bhargava pointed out that EVs are not enough to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He said: “EVs use electricity, 75 per cent of which comes from coal. If we are burning more coal where are we cleaning up,” he aksed. “Dependance on coal fired power stations will need to go down from 75 per cent,” he added.

Stressing that “we need to reduce dependence on EVs to clean up the environment” Bhargava said the country needs to produce hybrids, CNG, ethanol, biogas to reduce carbon dioxide. EVs are not enough.